This
by mysticVigil
Summary: Obscure, introspective, postHBP look at an essentially captive Draco. Written as a companion to 'She'.


Disclaimer: I don't Harry Potter, or anything that may, in some distant way, be related. All characters are copyright the fabulous J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury Publishing and, I'm sorry to say, I don't own them.

Summary: Obscure, post-HBP drabble focusing on Draco. Essentially DP.

A/N – The sad, short, sporadic semi-companion piece to "She" (but can definitely be a standalone.) Completely un-betaed because I wanted to post something kind of cool. Reviews are really appreciated (hint, hint). If I love you I might even respond (Gasp!).

Started: Saturday, 11.00

Finished: Saturday, 11.32 (…wow.)

**This**

He remembers her dancing and he likes to pretend the little scribbles on his paper are just that.

But they aren't. They're just scribbles, little green-or-black splotches and scratches and dots. Zigzags. They might have once been words, but they were words ages ago in his head and now he has trouble deciphering them into real symbols that stand for something more than nothing.

He thinks maybe he can roll up the parchment and send it to her anyway and she'll see herself dancing and know that he was thinking of her. Then his father takes the parchment and says, What is this? and he mumbles, Nothing, I was just dozing off.

--

He hasn't seen light for a very long time, longer than he likes to admit. Even when he was in the castle and there were jets streaming back and forth, it wasn't really light. It was just the moment's little tricks. And then it wasn't.

He remembers that the little jets were zigzagging too, and then like the ink on his parchment they were gone. The twists and the trials and the midair dances were all gone. He misses every little dance but mostly he misses the kind where light's shining through her black, black hair and she's smiling like the little porcelain doll that used to pirouette in his mother's jewelry box.

He doesn't like remembering that but her dancing elicits a smile. Even in the dark his father can find his face and says, What is this? and Draco doesn't answer. He just feels the stinging from the slap; he just closes his eyes and pictures real light and her laugh and fingers while the damp, slippery wall soaks his robes.

He wishes he could picture himself curled into her chest but that never happened.

--

When they were little she had wanted to be a ballet dancer. He could never forget that, and one day – or maybe it was night, he could never really be sure from this slimy box in the ground – one day… she danced into his dreams or his hallucinations. She kissed him very gently on the cheek and told him she loved him, and that's how he knew it wasn't real. But he let himself hope.

And she picked up the paper he had scribbled on, and she understood what it all meant.

He cried, and he let her put her arms around him. And when she pushed up the sleeves of his robe he saw white, white skin, and they both smiled. They smiled, and they smiled.

There was no smiling now. There was only his father. There was pitch blackness. There was ink on his skin that would never come off.

There was her, dancing away in his mind's eye, dancing and dancing into the light.

--

The blanket was over him and under him and all around. It was that critical time where the light was fading and he would soon be asleep and then she would close her eyes. He knew that morning would be different, and that he would be planning when she would be unaware, and he would never see this kind of light again.

He tried to take it all in: the way their toes touched, the way her fingers moved across his cheek, the way light danced in her hair. What is this? he asked and she said, This?

This… all of this. She shook her head and he realized his explanation didn't really explain anything, just like the meaning of her kisses and her touches and the small ways she danced for him, just for him, meant nothing at all.

This, she whispered later when the light was too bright and she thought he was asleep. This is you and me. This is forever.

--

Forever didn't last the way he thought it would.

Forever was ink on his arm and ink on the scribbled letters he never sent. Forever was the lack of light that never, never let him sleep. Forever was the stones under his feet and the promises he was denied and the master he never saw and the slavery his weakness (or was it strength?) bought him.

Forever was forever, but it didn't dance and it didn't smile and it didn't whisper.

He lived forever but he didn't live at all. And when he smiled or tried to scratch at the ink on his arm with a rock from the ground and just felt something sticky under his fingernails and his father hit him and said, What is this? he thought back to light and dancing.

He thought back to her and maybe, just maybe, all of this did explain something in the end.


End file.
